Listening to Mary Beard

Give me a chance to write instructions and ship my sale and I will bring back my Pride and Prejudice Needle Book to honor Jane Austen. This year is the 250th anniversary of her birth. She was born December 16, 1775.

I also have whitework and needlework tools from Jane Austen's Regency era and soon as I have time I will post photos of some of them. They are, if I do say so, stunning tools!

There is a lovely issue of Piecework Magazine, this time all about Regency Needlework from the era of and associated with Jane Austen. WELL worth collecting the issue!

I plan to post some whitework samples and some needlework tool photos that Jane Austen might have used, I just need to finish mailing my recent sale first.

More needlework tools Jane might have used.  Here are two beautifully carved needle books, one with pansies, the other with roses. Inside of each are flannel pages. I'm guessing both are French, about 210 years old.

This morning two beautifully carved silkwinders, again from the age of Jane Austen, one with the initials SP, the second with two birds, and again so fragile that it is difficult to believe they are still here after 200+ years.

Three Pincushions this morning, all round disks, each decorated with little black circles/dots which we collectors call Madras work. Likely East India Co export from India.

If you look carefully at the center one you will see that it is dated 1820 in tiny dots.

Do you recognize this portrait?

This is one of three survivng Armada portraits of Elizabeth 1, c 1588 showing Elizabeth at the height of her power.

This Armada Portrait is in the National Portrait Gallery in London.

Tudor power at its greatest.

Below is a second Armada Portrait of Elizabeth 1. Notice the windows on the left and the right. On the left, the sun shining brightly on the victorious English ships, on the right the shipwrecked Spanish ships. From the Woburn Abbey Collection, Bedfordshire. c 1588.

Last summer I began such a long journey: I decided to stitch one more Queen, this one my most ambitious project ever: the Armada Portrait. Why did I decide to do this? The answer is Mary Beard and a 2 minute video. If you click on the red link above, you can watch the video that will have claimed a year out of my life.

So the English didn't defeat the Spanish back in 1588, the weather did.

Do you know what the English said? The defeating weather was an act of God watching out for the English.

An important event? Had the Spanish defeated the English, our Westeern world would be a different place.

This is the third Armada Portrait, c 1588 and I think iit is the one that came up for sale recently. I read that the English raised £10m to keep the portrait on English soil..

When the English raised £10M to keep the third Armada Portrait on English soil, they celebrated by hanging the three portraits together for the first time. They hung them in Greenwich, the birthplace of Elizabeth 1, and they asked an array of people to comment on them. One of these people was Mary Beard.

To watch a 2 min video on Power and Women, click on the Red Button above right.

Happy Easter

Easter Sunday

Overcast and gloomy morning but a pleasant day ahead, I hope.

I don't know how much work I will finish today, but I may try to read through my instructions and see how they hold up;

I may also pull out pearls and sew the first oones into place around my Queen's Hair.

It has been a long time since I picked up a needle; I might just opt to do that.

Will see..